One Hundred Percent Lunar Boy (27 page)

“Yes,” Bruegel then added in a halting, dry voice. “The Pacer. It’s a good car. You’ll see.”

Slue said nothing and stared at Hieronymus for a good three or four seconds with a look of extreme annoyance on her face.

“What time do we have to meet your friend?” she asked. “The girl from Earth.”

“Eight. Eight o’clock. At the Ferris wheel in the amusement park at LEM Zone One.”

Slue looked at her own watch on her wrist and sighed out loud.

“We don’t have much time,” she uttered. Then she turned to Bruegel. “You—how fast is your car?”

“M-m-m-my Pacer?” he asked in a frightened little-boy voice.

“Yes. Your Pacer.”

“It’s…it’s a good car…”

“I didn’t ask if your Pacer was a good car—I asked if it was fast.”

“Fast? Yes, the Pacer can go very fast.”

“Can you take it of road?”

“Uh, I don’t know. I think so.”

The elevator finally reached the bottom of Pelikanhopper Tower, and the three of them walked through the lobby.

As they left the building, Bruegel interjected once more with something completely unrelated.

“Uh, Slue, uh, do you like the Ginger Kang Kangs?”

She ignored him and kept her gaze at Hieronymus as she continued.

“We’ll have to take a shortcut I know—it cuts through a deserted part of the Sea of Tranquility—if we want to get there on time.”

“You think we’ll be late?”

“It’s Saturday night. Have you any idea of how packed that highway is going to be?”

“You know a shortcut?”

“Yeah. If the highway is too crowded, it will definitely get us there on time, but it does go through the middle of nowhere, so I hope your friend’s car is in good shape…”

But Slue nearly bit her own tongue as the three of them came upon the vehicle in question.

The Pacer.

“Jesus Pixie,” she said.

Late or not, Slue refused to get into the vehicle unless the boys got rid of at least half the crap and junk, mostly bottles and cans and old bags of food. Luckily, there were a couple of empty large plastic bags in the glove compartment to expedite this task. Still, Slue was completely disgusted. Bruegel’s Pacer was an old car. It was a standard gyroscopically balanced sphere hanging within a five-meter-high rubber wheel, and even Pete’s Prokong-90, the last car she had ridden in, looked like this. But Pete kept his car clean and sharp and inviting for passengers, unlike this piece of klud she was about to enter. What a disaster! To imagine, at this moment, Pete was with Clellen! That clown! Clellen! Not that she was so taken with Pete—she would smack him if he even suggested going to one of those motels in Telstar—but what a thought! Indeed, the idea of sitting through
Trapezoids Crunchdown
was not truly appealing, but still, to be passed over, lied to, to have your date broken so he could go out with
her
, that… lunatic Loopie! And now here she was, with two losers, one of whom she’d known since third grade, whom she had always secretly liked, and this weird guy from the Loopie class. A weird guy with a crummy car full of junk. A weird guy who somehow had it in his weird mind that this was some kind of date!

Several hairline cracks in the vehicle’s large vulgar windows. Maroon paint flaking off. Dents. One of the headlights slightly dimmer than the other. Spots of rust. The exhaust pipe hanging at an awkward angle. On the back of the spherical body sphere, several utterly embarrassing bumper stickers that referred to bars or tourist attractions. The large single tire itself, almost bald. She could not believe that she was about to take a journey in such an outlandish pile of junk.

Hieronymus and Bruegel filled the two plastic bags with as many beer cans and bottles and as they could gather and tossed them out the door where the trash landed with a glass-breaking thud upon the concrete sidewalk next to the run-down vehicle.

“Come on, Slue!” Hieronymus shouted from the Pacer. “We’re late!”

Slue was seated on the edge of the curb.

“Yeah…Slue,” echoed Bruegel with a forced tone of familiarity. “We have to go.”

“I can’t believe you boys have just dumped all that skuk on the sidewalk like that without putting it into a garbage can.”

Bruegel turned the key and the mediocre engine began its infected coughing, almost drowning out Hieronymus as he called to her again.

“Come on, Slue. I don’t want the Earth girl to think we’re not coming.”

She stood up, went over to the two garbage bags, picked them up, and with one in each hand, began walking with long determined steps up the avenue toward a large trash receptacle. The Pacer slowly followed and waited as she shoved both bags into the already crowded bin that in of itself was big enough to hold fifty such bags. Three or four filth-covered hummingbirds flew up in a panic from the pile of trash, then hovered, waiting for the girl to leave. Bottles fell, and one of them shattered. The smell of old beer wafted up. She was beyond disgust, but back to the Pacer she went, climbing aboard to sit next to Bruegel in the passenger’s seat while Hieronymus stayed in the back.

Bruegel’s driving was as careful as his personality was random—he drove with an attentiveness that was borderline annoying as the Pacer swerved through the streets and then into tubes and tunnels that led away from the enormous housing complex of Sun King Towers. His eyes were constantly on the lookout for something.

“Hey, Bruegel!” Hieronymus called from the back seat, where he had stretched himself out now that the junk had been removed. “You do have your driver’s license, right?”

Bruegel, lost in his own careful driving, did not acknowledged his friend’s question.

“Uh, let’s see…” he mumbled. “Three traffic lights, make a left, Boulevard Queen Maria direction north three kilometers to exit 43, then onto Highway 16-61, straight on through to LEM Zone One…”

Slue glared over at Bruegel.

“Hey,” she could not bear to even mention his name at this point. “Hey—didn’t you hear Hieronymus? He asked you if you really have a driver’s license. Do you?”

Bruegel stared straight ahead, both of his sweaty hands on the large, skinny steering wheel.

“Yeah. Don’t worry. I got my license. I just don’t want to get stopped by cops.”

Slue stared at him with utter disbelief.

“If your license is okay, why are you so afraid of the cops? Are they looking for you?”

“No. If the cops were looking for me, all they’d have to do is pick me up at school.”

“Then what’s the problem? Why are you driving like such an old lady?”

“I’m driving like an old lady?”

Hieronymus was getting very bored by this exchange between Bruegel and Slue—the big fellow’s driving was bad enough, but every time she distracted him, he only slowed down to about half the speed he was already moving at. The night was young, and they were having a miserable time already.

Plodding along the Boulevard Queen Maria, the traffic clustered up around them. They hit every single red light. Saturday night and all the cities in the Sea of Tranquility were abuzz, a massive party on the near side of the Moon—horns honking, neon flashing, crowds gathering along the sidewalks.

“What the Hell is going on!” Hieronymus gasped. “I’ve never seen the Queen Maria this crowded before! Is there a holiday or something I’m unaware of?”

Slue turned around from the front seat to face him. She had that annoyed expression. She was so lovely. The purple tint of her lenses. Her blue hair. Her cheekbones. Her poncho. I love you, he said to her in his mind.
I love you, and yet here we are, on our way trying to meet up with another girl. I love her also, at least I think I do, but I don’t even believe that she is really going to be there, but I desperately want her to be there, despite what I saw with my uncovered eyes. If she is there, then it is proof that our eyes cannot read into the projections of the future. You and I will have proof that we are more normal than we realize. But if she is gone, then it is true—and I am doomed, as you are, Slue, we are doomed. Sooner or later, they will snatch us away and force us to pilot ships from one end of the solar system to the next, we will be separated by the vastness, imprisoned by what we can see, we will spend our lives as lost specks in the endless vacuum, our fates are the same, we will be caught, separated, exiled, and still, I am incapable of telling you the simple truth of how much you are to me, how you are the only reason I can continue living in this nightmarish world of neon and goggles and Loopies and Toppers and loser fathers and crying mothers and crowded places full of artificial people breathing the artificial air while the forbidden Earth above laughs down upon us with all its radiated, smoke-filled mess and mud and madness…

Slue continued to look at him from the front seat. Outside, the crowds of people lining Boulevard Queen Maria gathered in massive groups as the traffic ground to a depressing halt. Someone was blowing a tin horn just outside, and the thousands of conversations created a low timbered hum in the twilight that nearly drowned out the sound of the car engine.

Why is she looking at me?

“So,” began Slue, deliberately. “This girl from Earth.”

“I told you what happened.”

“Over the phone.”

“And…”

“We can’t speak safely over the phone. But here, in this hunk of trash that your friend thinks is a car, you can tell me exactly what happened. No one can hear us. Not even my date right here—he’s too nervous trying to drive, he won’t understand anything.”

This was true. And so, as the car inched forward, and with Slue’s face in the exact same position, looking back into the rear seat where Hieronymus sat, he told her the entire sordid, wonderful story. Including the part when they kissed.

Do you like her?

What do you mean, do I like her?

What I really mean is, do you love her?

I don’t know.

You must know. You showed her your eyes. You did it because she asked you.

She had the ability to keep herself as still as a stone. Hieronymus wondered, is this what women do when they are sad? She did not move the entire time they were stuck in traffic on the Boulevard Queen Maria. She sat in the front next to Bruegel, but she remained in that three-quarter-turn position, and she could have been a still photograph for all he knew. Why was she asking him these questions? Two pairs of goggles separated their eyes. She wanted to know if he loved the Earth girl. That seemed to be the whole point of this, even more so than the extraordinary crime he had committed the night before. It was more important that she knew. Did you love her? Do you love her?

In fact, what Hieronymus really wanted to do was jump up, take Slue by the hand, run with her, run with her, run with her, together, run through the crowds on the boulevard that surrounded them, away from Bruegel and his trashy car, away from the neon, from the towers and the roads, run deep into a field where the only light by which to see came from the muddy planet above, run to where there was no one, and at last do what had been on both their minds since the moment they met so many years ago—that is, to take the goggles off and look at each other.

“The Earth girl?”

“Who else, Hieronymus?”

“Yes. I love her.”

Slue looked at him for another two or three seconds, then she slowly turned away. A minute went by. Hieronymus could hardly breathe. Why did he tell her that? Why did he do that?
I don’t know what I am talking about
, he thought to himself.

Suddenly, the Pacer lurched forward at a green light, then made a left turn onto a ramp that led onto Highway 16-61. Leaving the traffic behind them, it appeared for a while that it would be a smooth and uninterrupted ride to LEM Zone One.

Slue opened her window. Hieronymus watched her blue hair as the wind from the outside swept into the car, the strands silhouetting against the headlights of the incoming traffic. They sped along the highway, the lunar landscape on both sides of the elevated concrete route glistening with bright, sizzling neon. It all became a blur. The traffic was fairly heavy—in front of them was a crowded mosaic of thousands of other cars all going in the same direction. Towers on both sides of the expressway went of into the horizon. Above them, hundreds of Mega Cruisers traversed the red-colored heavens. Hieronymus looked at the back of Slue’s head, and all he could feel was heartbreak.

I’m sorry.

They passed under several huge highway signs, all of them green with bright white lettering. lem Zone one—200 km. Then, all of a sudden, the traffic began to slow down again, like an accordion collapsing into its final low note, then stopping completely.

The three of them sat there. For three long, agonizing minutes. Then the traffic began to inch along.

“Okay,” Slue said to Bruegel in a very neutral, business-like voice. “We can’t stay on this highway if we’re gonna be on time to meet Hieronymus’ Earth girl.”

“I know,” replied Bruegel. “You said something about a shortcut?”

“Yeah. Get of at Exit 94. It’s up there, just beyond those three station wagons. That will take us to a small road called Sheng Avenue. We stay on Sheng till we pass a water crater that’s actually a seaweed farm, then we make a right turn into the countryside, we head due north into the middle of nowhere. We travel through the countryside for about an hour till we get to a whole bunch of lakes—this is the back way into LEM Zone One—then we’re there. Hieronymus gets to pick up his girlfriend, and then we go see the Ginger Kang Kangs at the Dog Shelter.”